It is known in the prior art to provide streaming video content to a client device and to allow a user to select the content to be streamed. In cable television systems that include legacy set-top boxes, providing a graphical user interface with full-screen streaming video content has proven to be quite challenging, since legacy set-top boxes often have disparate operating capabilities. Most legacy set-top boxes are capable of decoding MPEG-2 streams. These legacy systems have little capability with respect to providing graphic overlays and for receiving graphical user interface (GUI) data in a separate stream from the streaming video content. Thus, these legacy systems generally either provide no graphical user-interface during full screen playback or provide some rudimentary overlays that are generated by the cable-television set-top box. As technology progresses, cable television systems have become more diverse with multiple generations and even different brands of set-top boxes with widely varying capabilities. Hence, there is a need for an adaptive system that can provide advanced graphical user interface elements to all users while dynamically using the resources within the cable television network to provide a consistent user experience.